The Descendants (2011)

The Descendants Synopsis

With his wife Elizabeth on life support after a boating accident, Hawaiian land baron Matt King (Clooney), takes his daughters on a trip from Oahu to Kauai to confront the young real estate broker (Lillard) who was having an affair with Elizabeth before her misfortune.

The Descendants failed to clean up at Sunday’s Academy Awards ceremony, only managing to pull a win in one of its five nominated categories, the Best Adapted Screenplay award. Though facing stiff competition, there is no doubt the writing, the acting, and the direction was all there for The Descendants.

As I’m sure you are aware, the Academy Awards were held tonight and some of the best movies of 2011 were awarded Oscars for their achievements. But the timespan between January 1st and December 31st is a long there are new movies being released every single weekend. As a result, there’s a good chance that a) you might not have seen every title that won an award tonight and/or b) you might have missed our coverage of said title. Well, you’re in luck.

it's the rougher edges of The Descendants-- the Alexander Payne-ness of it, the now-ness of it-- that make it stand out. The way it engages with Matt's strange conflict in being both white and native Hawaiian, the way it depicts marriage as something that can break while nobody is watching, the way it allows Lillard's Brian Speer his own dignity even as a philanderer-- The Descendants goes down easy, but it carries tough things with it

The Writer's Guild of America is one of the final Hollywood trade organizations to hand out its annual prizes, and with their awards ceremony happening last night, it means that movie awards season is finally, truly almost over. The winners in the top categories-- i.e., the ones we're likely to see reflected at the Oscars on Sunday

Surviving a crash, surrounded by hungry wolves in a harsh, cold environment. It sounds almost like a metaphor for what a lot of movies are experiencing at the box office lately, but it was the plot of Liam Neeson's latest offering, which also happened to be the number one movie in theaters this weekend.

As both a film critic and reporter, I have to sit through a lot of terrible movies. This year I spent hours of my life watching movies like New Year’s Eve, Spy Kids: All The Time in the World, Abduction and Waiting For Forever. But it’s the good movies that make it all worth it, and this year there were some truly brilliant films in release. But among those great titles, what were my favorites? Well…

A decade spent working as a professional film critic has brought me here, to my tenth annual obligatory best of the year list. What you're getting here is a list of the 2011 movies which I think were the best. This list has the soul of a hero.

With the movie awards season in full swing, several critic's groups met today to award their prizes for the best of the year, and while the love was spread all over the place-- there is definitely no runaway critical success like The Hurt Locker or The Social Network this year-- one film seemed to get the lion's share of attention

The Independent Spirit Awards have announced the nominees for their annual prizes, which will be handed out on February 25, the day before the Oscars. True to form, the Indie Spirits recognized a number of films that won't show up at all for Oscar consideration, like Another Earth and Terri

Judy Greer has a career as a scene-stealer that stretches back to the late 90s, that has her working with icons like David O. Russell, Charlie Kaufman, Cameron Crowe and the enormous cast of Arrested Development. But talking to her a few weeks ago, she acted as if she was some nobody lucky enough to be picked by Alexander Payne to star in his new movie The Descendants

That giant milking sound you heard this weekend was Summit Entertainment leeching the wallets and purses of teenagers at heart as they unleashed the first part of the last part of the wildly popular sparkly-skinned, ab-endowed Twilight series.

This week on Operation Kino, we're buttoning up our floral shirts and slapping on some boat shoes as we review Alexander Payne's new movie The Descendants. From there we jump into something completely different in Segment 3, talking about the recent move of several high-profile directors into animation, and what that might mean for the form

Alexander Payne doesn't see any significance in the fact that he frequently casts movie stars-- Matthew Broderick in Election, Jack Nicholson in About Schmidt, now George Clooney in The Descendants-- in roles that contrast with their public personas. The way he explains it, he couldn't care less about commenting on their starpower-- it's all in whether or not they're right for the role. I'm not sure I believe him

When I talked to Woodley at the Toronto Film Festival in September her life was anything but day-to-day; The Descendants had premiered a week earlier at the Telluride Film Festival, and now in Toronto Woodley was being flooded with congratulations and attention from people who might have never seen her work before. But with a lot of talk about what George Clooney taught her

The Gotham Awards aren't the biggest prizes handed out during the movie awards season, but they can be the most meaningful for the people who get them. Focusing on independent films, sometimes with a New York-centric slant, the Gothams typically pick some films that are too small even for the Indie Spirits

The Ides of March may have been released to great reviews, but apparently it won't even be the best George Clooney movie released in 2011. The Descendants, the new film from director Alexander Payne, received glowing remarks by critics after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last month and is already predicted to be a serious contender come awards season at the beginning of next year.

With two big roles in two of the biggest films at this year's Toronto Film Festival, he's seeming especially on top of the world. Between his latest directorial effort The Ides of March-- in which he also plays a small but crucial role-- and his starring performance in Alexander Payne's The Descendants, Clooney is everywhere you look in this town

Payne's movies have never been blockbusters, but I have a terrible feeling that The Descendants is going to get absolutely buried. I have to wonder why they didn't move the film backwards instead of forwards, as December 2nd currently has no wide releases. Let's hope that George Clooney's appeal will be enough to give the movie some legs.

The most interesting thing about this announcement is the fact that it comes just a day before the fest is due to begin. Talk about coming in just under the wire. I’m thrilled to see new films from Martin Scorsese, David Cronenberg, Werner Herzog, and Wim Wenders on the roster. As a psychology nerd, Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, an examination of the relationship between Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, is particularly high on my list of must-sees.

Over the years we've seen George Clooney play many roles. He's been a doctor, an airborne businessman, a soldier, a psychic, a thief, a fugitive, a hitman, a football player and a spy. But while the guy has dabbled in seemingly every profession known to man, one job that rarely shows up on his resume is "father." Enter Alexander Payne's The Descendants.

If you think it's hard being a Paul Thomas Anderson, Quentin Tarantino or Wes Anderson fan and waiting for their next feature film to come out, imagine how hard it's been for admirers of Alexander Payne's work. Though he's been directing movies since 1996, he only has four features on his resume and hasn't made a film since 2004's Sideways

The Descendants is the story of a man, out of touch with his two daughters, struggling to cope with his wife's irreversible coma and extramarital affair. In as many words, shit gets complicated when he confronts his wife's other man and has to decide whether or not to unplug her from the machines keeping her alive.

George Clooney is dipping his toe into the world of mildly amusing yet moving Fox Searchlight movies. You know the type, it’s the Little Miss Sunshine genre in which an eccentric group of characters undertakes some sort of journey

It's been five years since Alexander Payne practically set the world on fire with Sideways, a movie about a midlife crisis that got a lot of people excited about wine, of all things. Now he's finally ready to direct his fifth feature